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The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) Feigns Unawareness That Its Own Members Were Behind the Honduran Coup – Español

By Jean-Guy Allard

Translation: Machetera

The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) that bemoans the “limitations” on press freedom suffered by media opposed to the coup d’etat, avoids recalling that two of the main conspirators behind the coup which led to the expulsion of President Zelaya from Honduras are also its main (and practically only) Honduran members.

Associated for decades with the CIA and located in Miami, USA, the IAPA has issued “denunciations” of the electricity cutoffs to Channel 36 and Radio Globo, through which they are trying to give themselves a legitimate image.

The IAPA criticizes the climate of “instability and restrictions surrounding the press” in Honduras “in recent months,” which in some cases, it notes, has led to “self-censorship.”

Just as hypocritically as the other press organization corresponding to North American intelligence, Reporters Without Borders, which attributes a new “wave of censorship” to President Zelaya’s return, the IAPA acts as though it is completely unaware that its own members are those who fostered the Micheletti regime.

Carlos Roberto Flores Facussé, the former president of Honduras (1998-2001) and the owner of the La Tribuna newspaper, and Jorge Canahuati Larach, the billionaire owner of the La Prensa and El Heraldo newspapers are among the conspirators who brought about the coup.

For those who may be unaware, the IAPA which aims to represent press freedom in America is nothing more than the cartel made up of the largest proprietors of communications media on the continent. Created in New York in 1950 through a U.S. intelligence operation, it was a pirate takeover of the legitimate pan-American organization created in Havana in 1943.

The IAPA is so closely linked to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that its headquarters in Miami is named after its founder, Jules Dubois, a CIA agent and former U.S. military intelligence colonel who died miserably in a Bogota hotel in 1966, under hazy circumstances.

Over the years, this association of press magnates intervened in UNESCO in order to defend the control of information by private business, participated in the dirty propaganda war against the democratic government of Salvador Allende, and kept quite silent during the coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. In the meantime, it has never missed an opportunity to attack Cuba.

A real network of magnates from the corporate press, the IAPA manipulates information far and wide across the continent, in parallel with its radio and television stations which pursue the same destabilizing objectives. Through the servile collaboration of its providers, the press agencies, the IAPA continually expands its attacks against Latin American leaders which are then taken up by its media affiliates.

In Honduras, the television, radio, cable and Internet circuits are entirely in the hands of very few individuals: Rafael Ferrari, Miguel Andonie Fernández, Rodolfo Irías Navas – all of them, primary “shareholders” in the Micheletti coup.

These millionaire communication media barons are such business professionals that some, such as Rafael Ferrari, also have their tentacles in U.S. chain franchises such as Burger King, Dunkin’ Donuts and Pizza Hut.

Instead of dedicating itself to stopping cold the fascist impulses of its associates Flores Facussé and Canahuati Larach, the IAPA went so far as to organize a “meeting” in Caracas with the reactionary Venezuelan press, under the pretense of “discussing the situation of freedom of expression,” but really to attack President Hugo Chávez all over again. The IAPA and Venezuelan Press Group held their meeting last Thursday and Friday in Caracas, in order to discuss the situation of freedom of expression throughout the continent.

The adjunct Secretary General of the Latin American Federation of Journalists (Felap), Nelson del Castillo, denounced this IAPA maneuver, pointing out that this mafia organization “has fathered the derailment of democratic processes, in the name of certain liberties, when the only intention is to violate the rights of the people and keep them in the most backward political, economic and social [state].”

Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity.This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, and translator are cited.